


lifetime running- wanna stay

by VerdantMoth



Series: Who could [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Coping, Food, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Tattoos, They get better by the end, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vacation, mostly - Freeform, questionable coping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 10:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20080774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: “Lemon bars,” Peter says from his seat. He’s got his forehead pressed to the glass of the truck Bucky’s bought.“What.” Bucky demands.“Question marks,” Peter parrots. Then he says, “I’m excited about lemon bars. You asked,” He pauses, flushing a little, “A couple of weeks ago what I was most excited about. Lemon bars.”Bucky snorts. “Of course you are. You’re going to make yourself sick again.”





	lifetime running- wanna stay

Peter allows himself exactly two weeks out of a year to grieve. Really, truly, full-body shaking _ grieve_. 

Bucky drives him, always the Sunday before the anniversary, down the east coast to some small, nowhere town they find on accident. Peter likes if they have a lake, Bucky likes if they’re surrounded by woods they can escape too. But in the last seven years they’ve gotten really good at picking the towns that don’t care who they are. It’s really not hard, they just have to drive until the hero billboards are replaced with “DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR SOUL IS HEADED?” billboards and the American flag flies right next to any number of military flags It’s nice, in it’s weird way. 

“Lemon bars,” Peter says from his seat. He’s got his forehead pressed to the glass of the truck Bucky’s bought. 

“What.” Bucky demands.

“Question marks,” Peter parrots. Then he says, “I’m excited about lemon bars. You asked,” He pauses, flushing a little, “A couple of weeks ago what I was most excited about. Lemon bars.”

Bucky snorts. “Of course you are. You’re going to make yourself sick again.” 

Peter bites his teeth at him, then pulls his cap off. 

The downside to Peter’s two weeks, Bucky has discovered, is he gets _ cranky_. “Tracker?” he asks. 

Peter wiggles his hand at him, pops the bug in his hat, and flicks it out the window. He studies the scrap of cloth as it’s shredded against the gravel. “Should probably feel worse about that,” he mumbles. 

Bucky grins at him in the mirror. “You kidden’? We aren’t in the middle of nowhere yet. At least one kid’s gonna pick up a cap signed by Spiderman and know what it’s worth.” 

Peter almost smiles. Bucky counts it as a win. 

-

They stop at a gas station to buy Peter a new hat, get gas, and stock up on foods dripping in grease. And to call Happy and Fury. 

“Every year,” Bucky can hear Peter argue. “Every year, you guys try to track us but you said-” 

Bucky winces, because he can hear the screeching even before Peter pulls the phone away from his ear. 

“No.” And Peter’s voice is heavy. “We get two, uninterrupted weeks and you can take your bureaucracy and concern and shove it up your gleaming little-”

Bucky snatches the phone away and says, bright and chipper and old-time drawl, “See you at twenty-one hundred in two weeks, Sir!” He chucks the phone as hard as he can, watching it explode in red clay. 

Peter grunts behind him. “I only had the one, Buck.” 

Bucky shrugs. “No interruptions.” He chucks a plastic container at Peter though, by way of semi-apology. 

Peter opens it, and he doesn’t quite squeal, he’s outgrown that mostly, but it’s a damn close noise. “Lemon bars?” 

“Got ‘em at the last stop. Was gonna surprise you when we hunkered down but,” Bucky cuts off, heat slithering up his neck. He fucking hates how hot the south is in fucking September.

Peter saunters by, smacks his ass and shoves a bite into Bucky’s mouth. “You’re blushin’” Peter whispers, before climbing behind the wheel. “C’mon. We’ve got three hours of backtracking and then another four before we reach the town.”

“Not the way you drive,” Bucky sighs. But he climbs into the passenger seat and pulls his own cap down low. “Wake me up so I can help pick the hotel.” 

Peter snorts and starts the truck.

-

He wakes Bucky up. It’s dusky out, all bruise-red skies and screaming cicadas. Peter throws a booklet at him. “Pick one,” he says. He sounds tired. Bucky throws the booklet right back at the side of his head and it’s only routine that allows Peter to catch it, not instinct. It’s small, but it’s a fact that makes Bucky smile. 

“Two or three stars, no murders in the last year, avoid pools,” Bucky says. 

“And try not to pick a pay by the hour,” Peter mocks. 

Bucky turns a little to leer at him, “I mean, I’m not sayin’ no to earning my keep…” 

Peter’s ears turn red but he grins. “Why Bucky, your man didn’t give you enough spending money this trip?” 

Bucky turns to him, blue eyes wide and doe-y, “My old man don’t treat me right. That’s why I thought I’d seduce a younglin’ like you. I mean,” he trails his fingers over Peter’s bicep, “with muscles like these you can keep me safe.” 

Peter fights to keep the smirk off his face. “I should not find that nearly as attractive as I do,” Peter chastises. “But seriously. Pick a place. One with a bar.” 

He cuts his eyes at Bucky, and sees the frown. “Don’t start with me,” Peter says. “I mean it. Don’t you dare start with me. I’m not a kid anymore so you, along with the rest, can fuck right off about all of this.” 

Bucky raises his hands in surrender. “I’m not holdin’ your hair back as you puke, princess,” he snarks. He snatches the book and flips through it until he finds a half-decent motel tucked away, middle of nowhere off the highway. “Even comes with breakfast,” he says quietly. 

“Good.” Peter snaps. 

They ride in silence for a while, skin itchy and buried grief pounding beneath their molars. Peter finally says, “Saw an advert for a diner there. Small little place, no chain. Supposed to be real, true home cooking.” 

Bucky grunts at him and Peter just sighs. “Winter Soldier knew more words than you do,” he grunts. 

Bucky throws the wrapper of a candy bar at his head and Peter doesn’t catch it. He blinks in surprise, but his lips twitch. 

Bucky can’t wait for the vacation to end, and Peter to give him a real smile again.

-

Grief, Bucky’s learned, always finds the beginning of the outlet in a diner. Maybe it’s years of pre-mission meals, or maybe it’s the natural human bonding experience of food, but they developed this ritual. 

Peter orders the largest, grossest, cheesiest burger he can find. He adds a side of fries and the thickest chocolate shake ever.

Bucky isn’t twelve, so he goes for meatloaf and mashed potatoes, but he’s also not fourty so he gets a strawberry shake. 

Most of these places still have actual, honest-to-god jukeboxes. Some of them built into the tables. This one has a box in a corner and it still cost fifty cents. Bucky pops a few quarters in and finds the worst, pop-country smear he can and lets it play. Peter’s head pops up and he goes, “I know this one.” 

But that’s all he says. They eat in silence, Peter, well and truly a gross specimen of humanity, smearing his fries through his shake, and then stacking it on his burger.

He has the gall to look disgusted when Bucky dips his meatloaf in mashed potato. 

But then their plates are empty, their glasses empty, and the jukebox quiet. Bucky sniffs first, then Peter. 

They don’t cry in the diner. They just get real quiet and wipe their noses on their sleeves and stare out the window. Sometimes one of them will think of a memory from before, and share it, quiet and liquid, and they’ll chuckle a little. 

Bucky usually moves first, to wrap himself around Peter. But this time, Peter moves. He climbs right over the table and into Bucky’s lap and holds him, buries his head in Bucky’s shoulders and bites the sob into his shirt. Bucky holds him, head in Peter’s brown hair and doesn’t say anything. 

The waitress comes by quietly and drops off the check. Like she’s seen this scene a million times before. Bucky almost wants to ask her how many people come just to cry in her booths. 

Instead he drops too many bills and picks Peter up with his metal arm. 

“I can walk,” Peter mouths against his shoulder. 

Bucky doesn’t answer. He dumps him in the seat, buckles him in and opens the map to their hotel. 

Peter slumps down, face smushed into the glass and he’s quiet, despite the earthquake in his shoulders. 

-

The hotel/motel is as shitty as they expected. It smells like bleach though, which is a good sign, and the shower has plenty of hot water. Peter strips after throwing his bag onto the bed and tests the shower out because he hates crying in front of Bucky, even years later. 

Bucky has zero respect for privacy and strips down, joins Peter. 

He wraps around the boy, the _ man_, and frowns. “Sometimes I forget how much you’ve grown,” Bucky whispers under the spray. 

Peter doesn’t say anything, as he traces the scars along Bucky’s shoulder, down his back. 

The water won’t get cold, so Peter finally removes himself from the hold to grab generic smelling soap and rub it into Bucky’s hair. “You need a trim.”

Bucky scowls, soaps up Peter’s hair and says, “Everyone always says that.”

  
Peter raises his brows. “Really? I got the impression that Steve always kinda liked it when you pulled this mess back.”

Bucky growls, because they’re apparently starting early this trip. “Fuck off Peter, it wasn’t like that.” 

Peter grins at him, cruel and red-rimmed, and turns the water off. He grabs a towel, wraps it around himself, and climbs out still wet. “I didn’t say it was; just that Cap liked your hair a little on the long side.” 

“Some days,” Bucky says, following him wet and naked, “I miss the kid who put ‘Mister’ in front of everything.” 

“No you don’t,” Peter sasses.

No, he doesn’t. Bucky climbs into the bed, hands on Peter’s waist, feeling the thick muscles. 

“You should get a tattoo,” Peter announces. 

Bucky furrows his brows. “What?”

Peter’s half asleep though, and Bucky forgets in the morning. 

-

They spend the first day mostly laying in bed and listening to Sam Smith songs. It’s not exactly Bucky’s music, not normally, but he feels it so deep in his gut he wants to vomit. Peter drinks cheap vodka and slurs his words and he strips down to his underwear, skin rippling. 

Bucky watches the ink, still shiny, catching the light that cuts through the gaps in the blinds. 

He’s beautiful, scars and skin and art. 

His eyes are blank though, warm brown gone winter-ice. He points the bottle at Bucky, “Drink with me.” 

Bucky pulls the covers up to his chin. “One of us needs to be sober enough to clean the puke.” 

Peter snorts. “Stevie isn’t here to tell us to clean our rooms, or yell at us to brush our teeth or whatever.” 

“Cold, Peter,” Bucky snarls. 

That’s how it goes, the first day. Peter drinking, and being an ass, and Bucky burrowing deeper and deeper into a cocoon that smells like sweat and salt. 

He doesn’t come out till Peter is passed out beside him, an arm lazily slung somewhere across his waist. 

Peter gets drunker the next day, and he’s quiet. He sits in the windowsill watching the birds and drinking, crying. 

Bucky draws.

Peter doesn’t ask what. He never has and Bucky’s never tried to show him. Because that’s the rule of the griefcation. Don’t ask, don’t fucking tell. 

Bucky wakes up the third morning to the sound of shattering glass and howling. He’s up, knife in each hand and eyes wild. Peter’s not _ saying _anything. He’s just screaming, raw and primal and bloody, bottles slamming into the walls and his fist cracking the mirror faster than his healing can handle. 

Bucky lets him. He stands back and watches and a part of him gets it, wants to _ be _ Peter right now. Wants to be the fucking mirror turned to dust across the stupid speckled tile floor. 

He steps over the mess, out into the hallway, and thank heaven for backwoods towns that are nosy until the screaming starts. 

Peter goes at it for hours. Enough time for Bucky to slip out and run some errands and come back with coffee and tacos, curly fries and a first aid kit. 

He picks glass and plaster out of Peter’s knuckles, occasionally having to rebreak the skin because of the healing factor. He’s not at all gentle pouring alcohol over it, even when Peter hisses and tries to take his hand back. He kisses the bandages when he’s done.

Peter doesn’t apologize, but when Bucky emerges from the shower it _ almost _ doesn’t look like a crime scene. 

Peter pulls him to sit between his legs, and he combs Buck’s hair out, braids it into a complicated bun he learned in college. Not that Bucky is _ jealous _ of the semester Peter spent fawning all over his roommates. 

But it’s nice, having Peter’s fingers scratch across his scalp. His hands aren’t shaking, even if Bucky is. 

“Cold?” Peter asks. He knows Bucky isn’t, but he still wraps a duvet around him, finishes his hair, and sits beside him, passing the fries back and forth. 

They don’t turn the t.v. on, or the radio. Not this week. It’s all poignant yet distant tributes to people who’ve been dead a lifetime. 

Sometimes, Bucky feels guilty about these trips. Because he knows Harley still spends them all alone and Pepper and Morgan have to shield each other from the media. He knows Thor’s fucked off to Asgard and Clint and Bruce are hiding on a fucking farm. 

Sometimes, he really fucking hates the Guardians who never had to deal with any of this shit. 

He hates Scott even more for actually coping, and Wakanda for thriving and all the others who get to escape without it meaning a goddamn thing because they never actually stuck around in the first place. 

So they don’t listen to the radio and they don’t watch t.v. but Bucky has a record player and Peter has music on his phone, and they lean against each other on the floor, the bed, in the shower. 

-

Bucky doesn’t tell Peter about the appointment he made until the day of. 

“Why the fuck,” Peter growls at him, “can’t I go?” 

“Did you take anyone when you got all of yours done?” Bucky bites right back. 

“That was different,” Peter says, “and you know it.”

Peter’s bulked up, and gained an inch or so since he was seventeen. But he looks just as small and fragile now, nose runny and eyes swollen, as he did when Bucky talked him off a gleaming statue. 

“You can’t come, Peter. If I fucking see you sneakin’ around,” Bucky hesitates. They can be nasty here, and it doesn’t mean shit. But there’s still fucking lines and shit. Bucky says, “You come, and that's the end of us, Peter.” 

Peter’s face shuts down. Complete emotional wipe, brown eyes dusty and skin robotic. “Big words for a man who carries wedding bands in his pocket.” 

Bucky punches Peter, right in the nose and storms out. 

-

No one ever told him that tattoos fucking _ suck_. And Bucky’s been tortured quite a bit. But he’s lying on his stomach, ten fingers twitching and breathing through it. “Sure you don’t want a break?” The guys asks for the third time. 

Bucky looks over his shoulder, eyes hard. This guy, with his long peppery beard and his fucking stretched lobes. “Ask again and I’ll rip your spleen out.” 

The guy raises his hands, gun still buzzing, and goes back to work. “It’s a beautiful piece,” he tells Bucky. 

“Thanks.” 

“You drew it yourself?”

“Yeah.”

The gun pauses for a moment, “Must be special, whoever they are.” There’s just enough tone, that Bucky thinks the guy knows, but he’s glad they leave it at that. 

It takes almost 12 hours to finish, pausing just a few times for smoke and piss breaks. The artist runs his fingers over it, and sighs. “Even with your healing, this is a lot. Gonna wrap it, recommend some lotion specially for your type, and tell you to eat some shit or something.” He studies Bucky for a moment, then adds, “and maybe don’t get into any fights or do anything strenuous or whatever.”

Bucky pays him, and wonders if he figured up his cash right. 

Then he remembers Peter _ also _ has cash so who cares. Plus he knows there’s shiny black plastic under the mat of the truck, if they get desperate. 

He wanders around the town some, unready to go back to Peter just yet. He can’t-

Peter’s twitchy. He’s, not _ vulnerable _ not anymore. But he doesn’t let himself _ feel _ or _ think _ for fifty weeks out of a year. Not about this. Two weeks isn’t nearly enough time, but it’s all Peter allows so Bucky tries to make sure Peter gets as much out of it as possible. 

But it’s also two weeks Bucky has to be careful about his own grief. Because if Peter drowns, Bucky has to be there to pull him out.

He sighs, and walks back, take out in hand and giant ass slurpees in the crook of his metal arm.

-

“I wanna see it,” Peter demands before Bucky’s even properly through the door. 

“No. Now shut up and grab your Kung Pow and eat it,” Bucky orders.

Peter narrows his eyes, but he grabs containers of rice and chicken and spring rolls and spreads them along the floor. Someone has tapped cardboard over where the mirrors used to be, and taken the trash out. There’s also new towels. 

New sheets, which is nice since the old ones smelled like alcohol, vomit, and body odor. 

They eat in silence for a while before Peter announces. “I want to fucking see it, Bucky.” 

“And I said fucking no.” 

“Hey, remember that time I was seventeen and you yanked my fucking shirt off to oggle my underage body?” Peter says as if he's bored. 

“Hey remember how you were self-destructing and I was trying to save your fucking ass?” Bucky says monotone. 

“Please?” Peter begs. His voice has gone small and terrified and broken. “Please, Bucky. I gotta see it.” 

Bucky puts down his beef and eyes Peter. He’s afraid to show him. Afraid for Peter to see the pain etched across his shoulders and down his spine. 

He’s afraid of what Peter’s gonna say. 

But he stands up, and turns, slowly. He fingers the hem of his shirt, and then shivers when Peter’s fingers skim across his skin. Together they lift the cotton. Peter pulls the bandage off.

Peter doesn’t gasp, doesn’t shiver, doesn’t fuckin’ _ breath _ when he sees it. Bucky has to look over his shoulder to make sure he’s still in the same room. 

He’s never seen a look like that on anyone’s face. Dead eyes, trembling lips, blotchy cheeks. “I fucking hate it,” Peter hisses. 

Of every possible reaction, Bucky had never planned for that one. Peter’s fingers trail over the watercolors. Over the rusty, copper crown cracked down the middle. Over the almost child sized boxing gloves, covered in Brooklyn soot. His nails nearly scrape over the brilliant star that cuts up Buck’s neck and spans over his shoulders. 

“I know that bar sign,” Peter says, voice thick and mucusy. “We pass it every year on his birthday.” 

“He got into his fist fight, had his first drink, and stole his first kiss there.”

Peter doesn’t acknowledge that. He turns on his heel and leaves Bucky standing shirtless and shivering in the middle of a room that smells like tears.

-

Bucky doesn’t go looking for Peter until the second night he spends alone. It isn’t _ hard _ to find him.

They pick small towns for a reason. And Peter is, despite his better intentions, predictable. In New York, the water is a fucking sea, practically. 

But here, in towns like this, it’s a small little thing, calm and beautiful and stagnant. Bucky lets his boots fall heavy, snapping every stick he can find. 

Peter doesn’t flinch when he sits beside him. 

Bucky finds Peter’s hand and wraps his fingers around it, tracing over a bandage Peter shouldn’t still need. Peter traces his thumb over Bucky’s scarred knuckles. 

They sit like that for a long time, watching the dark sky fade into pale oranges and bruised pinks. Peter falls into Bucky’s shoulder around the first bird call and this time, when he sobs, there’s nothing quiet about it. 

“Does it ever stop?” Peter screams into his shoulder. 

And Bucky, who had 70 years to grieve, even if he was out of it for most of them, answers as honestly as he can. “I don’t think so, Peter.”

He doesn’t know when he started crying, but he can’t stop. So he and Peter cling to each other, in the dusty red dirt of a nowhere town in a southern state and they feel everything they can’t the other 50 weeks of the year. 

-

Peter passes out as soon as his head hits the pillow, but it takes Bucky a helluva lot longer to drift. They can’t keep doing this. Not to themselves or each other, not to the people who love them. So he makes a promise to himself and falls asleep, and when Peter wakes up, Bucky hands him a bagel and coffee and says, “You’re gonna marry me when we get back.” 

Peter doesn’t argue. He eats, quietly, and watches as Bucky packs their things. 

“We still have two days,” Peter says quietly. 

“We can’t keep doing this.” 

Peter wipes his sleeve under his nose, “Yeah, I know. But we still have two days. It could be a real vacation.” 

Bucky pauses at that. Before, when Bucky was little, vacation was a thing rich families did. During the war, it was a chance to go home. After...

“Don’t think I know how to vacation,” he says. 

“You just… enjoy a place that isn’t home,” Peter explains. “We could,” he pauses. “We could leave the room and walk the town. Go sit in a sticky movie theater and make out like kids. Wander the aisle of a Wal-mart just because.”

Bucky dead-eyes him. “Why the fuck would we wander through a Wal-mart.” 

“Because we can. Because we’re a zillion hours from home and we don’t need anything but we’re tourist who want dumb-fuck t-shirts and novelty mugs,” Peter huffs, hands tossed in the air. 

That’s the stupidest thing Bucky’s ever heard, and once, pre-serum, Steve had a whole convoluted plan for sneaking into a bar when they were _ twelve_. “Okay,” he says. 

Peter blinks at him, like he expected more arguments. “Okay,” Bucly tells him. “Let’s go to Wal-mart.” 

-

They do. It’s stupid as fuck, but they go to Wal-mart and they hold hands and they snort at the ridiculous t-shirts and buy each other stupid mugs with dumb slogans. And no one blinks at them and it’s nice. They almost feel normal. 

“It’s never going to stop, is it?” Peter asks quietly as they share a tub over overly buttery popcorn and a movie plays in front of them. 

“What?” Bucky asks. He actually half cares about the broody teens falling in love on screen.

“The pain, the missing them?” Peter’s voice is almost nothing when he answers. 

Bucky thinks about it for a while. The credits role, and because they can they buy a ticket to another movie. Some kids’ thing with singing… colors. “You can’t out run it, can’t avoid it.” 

“Can’t bottle it up for fifty weeks and try to process it in two?” Peter guesses. 

Bucky tilts his head forward so his hair hides the small smile creeping through his stubble. “Somethin’ like that.” 

Peter gets quiet for a little bit and then he asks, “So you really wanna marry me?” 

Bucky shrugs, “I’ve only been asking since you walked across the last school stage.” 

Peter picks up Bucky’s metal hand, traces the goves, all the lines where the plate comes together. “We gotta clean this up,” he tells Bucky.

Bucky curls his fingers and tugs his hand. “S’not an answer, Petey.” 

Peter says, “Wanna stay?” 

Bucky blinks, “Huh?” 

“With me, wanna stay with me,” Peter clarifies. 

“For how long?” Bucky asks cautiously. 

“I dunno, probably forever,” Peter shrugs. “Or at least until we outrun the grief.” 

Bucky grins. “Could be a lifetime.” 

Peter bites his cheeks against his own grin, “You should know.” 

Bucky turns in his seat, serious suddenly, and takes both of Peter’s hands in his own. Warm blue eyes pin cold brown ones and Bucky says, “I really would, Peter. I really would.” 

Bucky kisses him, and it’s enough that a mom shushes them for some reason, then hisses unrepeatable words in front of her son. Peter grins at her and smacks a sloppy kiss on Bucky’s cheek. “S’okay ma’am, we’re gettin’ hitched when we get back!” 

He yanks Bucky up and out of the sticky theater, back to the truck. 

-

“You meant that, yeah?” Bucky asks somewhere between North Carolina and New York.

“Hmm?” Peter asks. He has one hand on the wheel, and the other tangled in Bucky’s hair, scratching behind his ear. 

“You really wanna marry me, finally?” Bucky asks. He’s quiet, shy in his question. 

Peter glances at him. “We’ve spent a lifetime running from everything that haunts us, Buck. I think, If we both _ want it_, we might as well find somewhere to stay put for a bit. Enjoy what’s still here.”

Bucky frowns and Peter half turns towards him, a little hurt. “Bucky, is that,” Peter hesitates. “Do you _ not _ want to stay with me?” 

“That’s not it, Peter,” Bucky says gently. “It’s just, if you’re gonna go on a bender, I don’t-” 

Peter takes his hand back, clenches the wheel until it starts to bend. 

“We can be sad and be happy at the same time. Miss them and move on,” Bucky tells him.

“I know that,” Peter says. He sounds _ older_. That unique kind of exhaustion from too much experience. “I get it, now. And I’ll learn to sort it. But with you there. By my side.” 

“And?” Bucky asks. 

“And I want you there, by my side. I want you to stay, for everything. Good bad and ugly. “ 

Bucky thinks about it for a little bit and then he says, “Do you really hate the tattoo?”

Peter shakes his head. “It’s beautiful. It’s, it’s perfect. All Steve, with a hint of Cap. It’s everything he’d want his best pal to remember.”

“But you hate it,” Bucky figures. 

“Don’t you hate mine?” Peter returns. 

And yeah, Bucky does. Not because they aren’t gorgeous, but because they’re permanent reminders. As beautiful as they are, they’re also ugly and tragic and just… 

Bucky thinks they’re like the flames of a massacre. If you don’t understand them, they’re just a pretty splotch of ink on canvas. But once you get what the smoke is saying, well, “We can’t out run the ink, can we?” Bucky says. 

Peter shakes his head. “No, no we can’t.” 


End file.
